Here is something all who want to learn about Common Core need to understand:

Look at the picture of when states governors signed on to the Common Core --it is on the Race To The Top Application--most did it in January 2010.

Then read excerpts from Professor Sandra Stotsky who tells you the behind scenes story of how each state's standards (ones that signed on to CC) were given up for the Common Core Standards while the standards were not yet finished. This was done to the children. All that mantra of rigor, bench-marked and tested must be understood for what it is. Come find out for yourself--here's one state (Alabama) example--study the picture with the letter from Professor Stotsky:

Common Core’s Invalid Validation CommitteeSandra StotskyProfessor Emerita, University of ArkansasPaper given at a conference atUniversity of Notre DameSeptember 9, 2013Common Core’s K-12 standards, it is regularly claimed, emerged from a state-led process in whichexperts and educators were well represented. But the people who wrote the standards did not represent therelevant stakeholders. Nor were they qualified to draft standards intended to “transform instruction forevery child.” And the Validation Committee (VC) that was created to put the seal of approval on thedrafters’ work was useless if not misleading, both in its membership and in the procedures they had tofollow.I served as the English language arts (ELA) standards expert on Common Core’s Validation Committee(2009-2010) and in this essay describe some of the deficiencies in its make-up, procedures, and outcome.The lack of an authentic validation of Common Core’s so-called college-readiness standards (i.e., by acommittee consisting largely of discipline-based higher education experts who teach undergraduatemathematics or English/humanities courses) before state boards of education voted to adopt thesestandards suggests their votes had no legal basis. In this paper, I set forth a case for declaring the votes bystate boards of education to adopt either set of Common Core’s standards null and void—and any testsbased on them.For many months after the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) was launched in early 2009,the identities of the people drafting the “college- and career-readiness standards” were unknown to thepublic. CCSSI eventually (in July 2009) revealed the names of the 29 members of the “StandardsDevelopment Work Group” (designated as developing the two sets of “college-and career-readinessstandards) in response to complaints from parents and others about the CCSSI’s lack of transparency.About half of the members were on the Mathematics Work Group, the other half were on the ELA WorkGroup.What did the ELA Work Group look like? Its make-up was quite astonishing: It included no Englishprofessors or high-school English teachers. How could legitimate ELA standards be created without thevery two groups of educators who know the most about what students should and could be learning insecondary English/reading classes?CCSSI also released in July 2009 the names of individuals in a larger “Feedback Group.” This groupincluded one English professor and one high-school English teacher. But it was made clear that thesepeople would have only an advisory role – final decisions would be made for ELA by the Englishteacher-bereft ELA Work Group. Indeed, Feedback Group members’ suggestions were frequentlyignored, according to the one English professor on this group, without explanation. Because both WorkGroups labored in secret, without open meetings, sunshine-law minutes of meetings, or accessible publiccomment, their reasons for making the decisions they did are lost to history.2The two lead writers for the grade-level ELA standards were David Coleman and Susan Pimentel, neitherof whom had experience teaching English either in K-12 or at the college level. Nor had either of themever published serious work on K-12 curriculum and instruction. Neither had a reputation for scholarshipor research; they were virtually unknown to the field of English language arts. But they had been chosento transform ELA education in the U.S. Who recommended them and why, we still do not know.Interestingly, no one in the media commented on their lack of credentials for the task they had beenassigned. Indeed, no one in the media showed the slightest interest in the qualifications of the standardswriters.In theory, the Validation Committee should have been the fail-safe mechanism for the standards. The VCconsisted of about 29 members during 2009-2010. Some were ex officio, others were recommended bythe governor or commissioner of education of an individual state. No more is known officially about therationale for the individuals chosen for the VC. Tellingly, the VC contained almost no experts on ELAstandards; most were education professors and associated with testing companies, from here and abroad.There was only one mathematician on the VC—R. James Milgram (there were several mathematicseducators—people with doctorates in mathematics education and/or appointments in an educationschool). I was the only nationally recognized expert on English language arts standards by virtue of mywork in Massachusetts and for Achieve, Inc.’s American Diploma Project high school exit standards forELA and subsequent backmapped standards for earlier grade levels. There were no high school Englishteachers on the VC until one was appointed in late fall in response to my complaints.As a condition of membership, all VC members had to agree to 10 conditions, among which were thefollowing:Ownership of the Common Core State Standards, including all drafts, copies, reviews, comments, and nonfinalversions (collectively, Common Core State Standards), shall reside solely and exclusively with theCouncil of Chief State School Officers (“CCSSO”) and the National Governors Association Center for BestPractices (“NGA Center”).I agree to maintain the deliberations, discussions, and work of the Validation Committee, including thecontent of any draft or final documents, on a strictly confidential basis and shall not disclose orcommunicate any information related to the same, including in summary form, except within themembership of the Validation Committee and to CCSSO and the NGA Center.As can be seen in the second condition listed above, members of the VC could never, then or in thefuture, indicate whether or not the VC discussed the meaning of college readiness or had anyrecommendations to offer on the matter. The charge to the VC spelled out in the summer of 2009, beforethe grade-level mathematics standards were developed, was as follows:1. Review the process used to develop the college- and career-readiness standards and recommendimprovements in that process. These recommendations will be used to inform the K-12 developmentprocess.2. Validate the sufficiency of the evidence supporting each college- and career-readiness standard. Eachmember is asked to determine whether each standard has sufficient evidence to warrant its inclusion.33. Add any standard that is not now included in the common core state standards that they feel should beincluded and provide the following evidence to support its inclusion: 1) evidence that the standard isessential to college and career success; and 2) evidence that the standard is internationally comparable.”It quickly became clear that the VC existed as window-dressing—to rubber-stamp, not improve, whateverstandards were declared as college-and career-readiness and grade-level standards. As all members of theVC were requested to do, I wrote up a detailed critique of the draft college and career readiness standardsin English language arts in September 2009 and critiques of draft grade-level standards as they were madeavailable in subsequent months. I sent my comments to the three lead standards writers designated at thetime,1 as well as to Common Core’s staff, to other members of the VC (until the VC was directed by thestaff to send comments only to them for distribution), and to Commissioner Chester and the members ofthe Massachusetts Board of Education (as a fellow member). At no time did I receive queries, never mindreplies to my comments from the CCSSI staff, the standards writers, or Commissioner Chester and fellowboard members.In a private conversation at the end of November, 2009, I was asked by Chris Minnich, a CCSSI staffmember at the time, if I would be willing to work on the standards during December with Susan Pimentel.We had worked together under contract with StandardsWork on the 2008 Texas English language artsstandards and, earlier, on other standards projects. I agreed to spend about two weeks in Washington, DCworking on the ELA standards pro bono with Susan after being assured that she was the decision-makingELA standards writer. I then called Susan to discuss the kind of changes I thought the November 2009draft needed before we began to work together and to clarify that agreed-upon revisions would not bechanged by unknown others before going out for comment to other members of the VC and, eventually,the public. I then sent an e-mail with the list of these possible changes to Chris (and asking for supportfor Susan because she had indicated in our telephone conversation that she was not in fact the finaldecision-maker for ELA standards). A week later, I received a “Dear John” letter from Chris, thankingme for my comments and indicating that my suggestions would be considered along with those from 50states and that I would hear from the staff sometime in January.In the second week of January 2010, a “confidential draft” was sent out to state departments of educationin advance of their submitting an application on January 19 for Race to the Top (RttT) funds. (About 18state applications, including the Bay State’s, were prepared by professional grant writers chosen and paidfor by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—at roughly $250,000 each.) A few states included thewatermarked confidential draft in their application material and posted the whole application on theirdepartment of education’s website (in some cases required by law), so this draft was no longerconfidential. It contained none of the kinds of revisions I had suggested in my December e-mail toMinnich and Pimentel. Over the next six months, the Pioneer Institute published my analyses of thatJanuary draft and succeeding drafts, including the final June 2 version. I repeatedly pointed out seriousflaws in the document, but at no time did the lead ELA standards writers communicate with me (despiterequests for a private discussion) or provide an explanation of the organizing categories for the standardsand their focus on skills, not literary/historical content.One aspect of the ELA standards that remained untouchable despite the consistent criticisms I sent to thestandards writers, to those in charge of the VC, to the Massachusetts board of education, to theMassachusetts commissioner of education, to the media, and to the public at large was David Coleman’sidea that nonfiction or informational texts should occupy at least half of the readings in every English4class, to the detriment of classic literature and of literary study more broadly speaking. Even though allthe historical and empirical evidence weighed against this concept (and there was none supporting it), hisidea was apparently set in stone.The deadline for producing a good draft of the college-readiness and grade-level ELA (and mathematics)standards was before January 19, 2010, the date the U.S. Department of Education had set for stateapplications to indicate a commitment to adopting the standards to qualify for Race to the Top grants. Butthe draft sent to state departments of education in early January was so poorly written and contentdeficientthat CCSSI had to delay releasing a public comment draft until March. The language in theMarch version had been cleaned up somewhat, but the draft was not much better in organization orsubstance – the result of unqualified drafters working with undue haste and untouchable premises.None of the public feedback to the March draft has ever been made available. The final version releasedin June 2010 contained most of the problems apparent in the first draft: lack of rigor (especially in thesecondary standards), minimal content, lack of international benchmarking, lack of research support.In February 2010, I and presumably all other members of the VC received a “letter of certification” fromthe CCSSI staff for signing off on Common Core’s standards (even though the public comment draftwasn’t released until March 2010 and the final version wasn’t released until June 2010). The originalcharge to the VC had been reduced in an unclear manner by unidentified individuals to just the first twoand least important of the three bullets mentioned above. Culmination of participation on the committeewas reduced to signing or not signing a letter by the end of May 2010 asserting that the standards2 were:1. Reflective of the core knowledge and skills in ELA and mathematics that students need to be college- and careerready.2. Appropriate in terms of their level of clarity and specificity.3. Comparable to the expectations of other leading nations.4. Informed by available research or evidence5. The result of processes that reflect best practices for standards development.6. A solid starting point for adoption of cross-state common core standards.7. A sound basis for eventual development of standards-based assessments.The VC members who signed the letter were listed in the brief official report on the VC (since committeework was confidential, there was little the rapporteur could report), while the five members who did notsign off were not listed as such, nor their reasons mentioned or letters shared. Stotsky’s letter explainingwhy she could not sign off can be viewed here,3 and Milgram’s letter can be viewed here.4This was the “transparent, state-led” process that resulted in the Common Core standards. The standardswere created by people who wanted a “Validation Committee” in name only. An invalid process,endorsed by an invalid Validation Committee, resulted not surprisingly in invalid standards.States need to reconsider their hasty decisions to adopt this pig in an academic poke for more thansubstantive reasons. First, there has been no validation of Common Core’s standards by a legitimatepublic process, nor any validation of its college-readiness level in either mathematics or English languagearts by the relevant higher education faculty in this country. State standards typically go out for a lengthyand timely public comment period (not usually during the summer when teachers and administrators arenot in their schools) and for revision before approval by a board of education.5Second, boards of education generally have no statutory authority to decide on college-readiness levelsfor credit-bearing post-secondary courses. This is the prerogative of a board of higher education or boardof regents or trustees. State legislators seeking to explore the legitimacy of the votes taken by theirboards of education in 2010 might request an investigation by the inspector general in their attorneygeneral’s office. Inspector generals are by statute allowed to determine whether the process followed by astate agency, committee, or board in making a policy decision abided by statutory authority and followedappropriate procedures.Third, there is nothing in the history and membership of the VC to suggest that the public should placeconfidence in the CCSSI or the U.S. Department of Education to convene committees of experts from therelevant disciplines in higher education in this country and elsewhere to validate Common Core’s collegereadinesslevel.It is possible to consider the original vote by state boards of education to adopt Common Core’s standardsnull and void, regardless of whether a state board of education now chooses to recall its earlier vote. Anytests based on these invalid standards are also invalid, by definition.1The lead ELA standards writers listed in 2009 were David Coleman, James Patterson, and Susan Pimentel.2Keep in mind that the final version was not released until June 2, 2010 and many changes were made behind thescenes to the public comment draft released in March 2010.3http://nyceye.blogspot.com/2013/08/mass-standards-czar-stotskys-letter-on.html4ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/final-report-for-validation-committee.pdf